Field Guide to the Other Side
by Miss Lonelyhearts
Summary: From a kink-meme prompt asking for a college-age Stiles returning with tons of confidence, going after a somewhat shy Derek. I decided to use the Ten Untranslatable Words meme to create a ten-chapter series of vignettes showing what that might be like. Not a full fic, but a few scenes in the course of Stiles being home on holiday, and the two of them finally getting it right.
1. Chapter 1

**_Retrouvailles _****(French) - The happiness of meeting again after a long time.**

* * *

"Hale! People for you."

The foreman shouts up at him from the ground floor, squinting his eyes below the shade of his hand, and Derek nods without looking away from the lumber under his gloves. He'd held up the window frame, nudged the shims, placed the finishing nails and still smelled them long before he finally sees them coming through the construction site, picking out the distinct thuds of their heartbeats all the way down the street.

Erica's first, voice sharp and shiny, everything about her as obvious as orchids, and then Scott. As the foreman waves them through the barricade, three faces upturned for him, Derek can sense Scott's twisting thread of strength and relief - Scott, whose coming here makes Derek's legs move, makes him pace the plywood as he hears them shuffle up the stairs.

Makes him realize that there's more to look forward to than exhaustion picking him clean like carrion at the end of the day.

They're back. His blood crowds into his head, they're back, and the third face moving through the site is Stiles close behind Scott. He's the last scent Derek picks out, cotton and sweat like always but fuller, thick with nerve. But not nervous.

"Brought you a treat," Erica winks at him as they clamber onto the open second floor, heads swiveling to mark the big, suburban box Derek's being paid to nail together out here.

But Scott glides past the other workers, and doesn't stop until he's boot-to-boot with Derek, where he can probably see the year's worry beneath the sawdust, as he probably had every year since leaving for college.

Scott always seems to know how and when to hug, a magnetic thing between family, and Derek still can't work it fluidly no matter how many times they've shown him. So Scott does the hugging while Erica grins so fast that only Derek catches it. He hugs Scott back, before the kid who's not a kid any more, lets go.

"Welcome back," Derek says, knowing it's just for the holidays.

"Thanks." Scott pats his back and they separate.

Stiles comes at him, arms wide. "You don't get enough anger management with the whole full moon thing," he says. "You have to come here and take it out on innocent wood?" His smile is so open, heart and scent pumping out real-time warmth, that Derek surprises himself by stepping straight into the hug.

Surprises Scott, too, who throws his smirk down to the plywood instead of at Derek's face.

"Good to see you, too, Stiles." It's not just good - it's unfamiliar and good, two things that rarely stack up together for Derek.

He hugs what should be a wiry kid and finds broader shoulders than he remembers. Stiles grips him high and low across his back, and Derek has to blink because hope is a skill they'd all pounded into him as relentlessly as the hugging thing.

Under his breath, somewhere in the once-white edge of Derek's shirt, Stiles mumbles _he's okay, it's fine _and laughs a little.

Until now, Derek couldn't be sure the hope he'd placed in Stiles - their voice of reason and their fox in the fold - hadn't been a fuck-up. He has the urge, which he stifles, to muss Stiles' longish hair, but it'd be awkward with how tall he stands now.

As Derek lets go of him, Stiles nodding like it's some secret joke, he's sure of a couple of things:

His faith was not a fuck-up, and Stiles smells like _want._

The first is more than enough to make Derek exhale loudly, which he does, drawing amused eyebrows from Erica. The second isn't new - Stiles has always been a tight ball of yearning for one thing or another – but this is larger, bigger like his chest and the arms folded across it, and _focused_.

Derek's just not sure where.

Not sure why it matters, either, that Stiles is still wearing plaid, but tighter, with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows. Derek swallows and makes a gargantuan effort to skip right over the fitted jeans, the slick shoes, and instead swings his eyes back to Scott.

"I gotta get back to this," Derek says. "Um, you're at your mom's?"

"Yeah absolutely," Scott replies, nodding. "Benefits of no siblings, I guess. My room's like a shrine after all this time. But yeah." Scott shoves his hands in his pockets and starts toward the staircase. "Come by, she won't mind if you use the front door."

If Melissa McCall minded, Derek wouldn't step within a hundred yards of the house. He smiles at the floor, thumbs working into his belt loops. Those nice shoes move away, too, taking Stiles and his dense tangle of confidence and desire with them.

Scott waves as he goes, and Stiles turns to follow.

"You're gonna want to watch him go," Erica whispers, nudging Derek's shoulder. "I've been doing it all day."

Derek scrubs a dirty hand over his face. Erica is many things, and at the moment she is... right. Derek gets a good look, gets an eyeful of Stiles from the back that feels sort of like zipping through time to some point when it would have been different for him, instead of how it was.

"Right?" Erica whispers again, big eyes burning holes in his already warm cheeks. "See you later, gator."

Then she's gone, too, the click and drawl of her heels following Scott and Stiles back out to the street.

He doesn't realize how hard his brows are drawn until he looks up ten minutes later. The carpenter and the drywaller working by the staircase have the good sense to wait until Derek has his gloves tight around the next window frame before they crack their brief smirks in his direction. Derek curbs the rumbling swear building in his throat and pushes the frame into place.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Wei-wu-wei_**** (Chinese)- Conscious non-action. It's a deliberate, and principled, decision to do nothing whatsoever.**

* * *

Over the sound of Allison's taunts on the court, the slap of the basketball on concrete, Stiles can hear the last leaves of winter scraping each other to pieces in the wind. He scans the park, but other than the three of them there's no one. All the kids are probably inside with cocoa and video games. Which doesn't sound like a terrible idea, actually. Stiles pulls his coat tighter and watches Scott block Allison's shot.

His plan is two days in and where he would, once upon a time, have been bouncing off the walls to celebrate, Stiles takes his small victories with small delight. It's smarter this way, a continuation of something he'd learned first from Lydia, and then kept seeking out. Like watching a great movie so many times he could re-create it shot-for-shot himself, and maybe even better. Stiles is pretty sure he could make Fight Club better today. Mastery feels fucking great, both in the learning and in the doing.

He looks down at the notification on his phone and doesn't pick it up.

At college, Oliver the barista had given him a wicked kink for public spaces. Bennie the physics TA had passed on a villainous talent for withholding. And Camille and James, the couple, had teased Stiles for weeks. He'd considered less than fun to be constantly checking his phone for messages from either of them. But they _had_ made good on all that careful set-up, and made it so often that Stiles almost failed Lit.

But, he'd learned, soaked it up, and gone back for more. There was work he knew he'd be doing in school it just hadn't occurred to him to count sex among it. Everything hurt – growing up and filling out – but everything had also been stupidly wonderful, sex turning up on his doorstep like baskets full of free puppies. To his complete surprise, these hipster jean-wearing, perfumed and pierced 'instructors' kept sort of lining up to teach Stiles some part of this dance.

It wasn't for nothing. Because maybe he'd always had this plan, even when it seemed more unreal than friggin werewolves themselves.

Stiles touches his phone lightly, tempted to look and knowing he doesn't have to.

He watches Allison sink another basket, and how Scott doesn't even struggle with his admiration for her while he's getting his ass handed to him. Stiles makes another mark for Allison in his notebook. They're sweating like crazy even though it's cold on the park court, and Scott kisses her before stealing the ball, dribbling, and missing.

"Hey, how is it that you were so great at lacrosse but you suck at shooting a ball that's literally ten times bigger?" Stretching out on the metal bleachers, Stiles bites the tip of his leather glove and pulls it off. "Does the bouncing hurt your ears or something?"

"No, I just-" Scott huffs, hands on his hips. "Maybe I'm distracted."

"Maybe werewolves are just bad at basketball." Allison chases down the ball, snapping it between her legs and up again, dodging Scott's block.

Maybe they're too perfect to look at, Stiles thinks. As he watches them anyway, tracking the speed and how Scott improves without even knowing it, his phone buzzes on top of the notepad. His text tone from Derek is the sound of a table-saw, and even after two days of Scott assuring him that it's not funny, Stiles still smiles.

"How many does that make?" Scott stops Allison from stealing the ball, tucking it under his elbow as they breathe hard and stare at Stiles.

"Four. No, five if you count the smiley." He pushes away the entirely inappropriate impulse to lick the screen every time he scrolls through these texts. Two days. It feels like he broke some kind of record for seduction. "And I'm counting it. Counted."

"Jesus! That's more that he sent me the whole last year of high school." Scott swipes a hand through his hair and lets Allison poke the ball out from under his arm. Then he squints sideways at Stiles. "A smiley?"

Fuck yeah, a smiley, and Stiles had sent one back. He'd sent a response to everything Derek threw his way, never pushing a meet, never more than casual, never using the words that had been burning the tip of his tongue. Burning up other parts, too. Mastery is knowing when to shut up and just think about the shape of something, someone, without over-tracing it too hard with words.

"Five texts in two days and I refuse to feel anything but awesome about it," Stiles says, pointing with his phone and waggling it in a circle at Scott and Allison. "So, you can both cram it with walnuts. I see your faces." He puts the phone down, tipping his head back, and watches the clouds slink off the sun. It catches on his face, warm, and Stiles closes his eyes. "It's all part of the plan."

"This isn't like back at campus," Scott says, leaving the hard court, and Stiles feels him sit on the riser just below.

Stiles sighs, turning the phone with one finger in a slow pivot on his notepad.

"I don't have to explain to you why this is totally a different situation right?" He cracks an eye. "Allison? Does Scott need to have a talk? Because I'm good with kids and growly people, but I don't know if I can explain the intricacies of-"

"No, he doesn't need a talk." She quirks her mouth, looking suddenly like a much older woman, and Stiles doesn't like where Allison's face meets Kate's in his mind. She sits, too, knees pressed against Scott's. "But maybe _we_ do. Be careful, Stiles."

"I am like the president and CEO of careful. Please remember who you're talking to."

It'll be vivid for her, Stiles knows, to pull up the memory of graduation, and the shitstorm of what came after. Like opening a file that you label something totally ludicrous, like _ghandi-non-con_, so you never have to go there again. But the pictures are all full-res. Evidence. And Stiles takes more time than he should to remember how it went down, when he should be out prowling in his bigger skin, because this is the plan for getting them both what they need: Know the history of it, shot-for-shot. Figure out what makes it great. Do it all over again, _better_.

"Besides," Stiles adds, "when has anyone been careful with me?"

"It's not the same for him," Allison says, her fingernail running the slim, black diameter of the basketball.

"I know." But also, _yes it is_. He nods because they want him to.

"Stiles," Scott says, developing a severe crease above his brows. He turns fully toward Stiles. "We're going back in three weeks."

Always so goddamn literal, sincere. For living half his life as a creature of stealth, Scott's got an unnatural attachment to his _Episode IV_ Luke side.

"I can always tell when you get judge-y, both of you, because you use my name like it's some psych experiment." He turns over the leather glove in his lap, fights the need to put the material between his teeth. "I know what I'm doing."

"And what exactly is that?" Scott asks, ducking his head to try to follow Stiles' eyes as they skate, darting to the phone again. So Stiles puts it away and tugs his glove back onto his chilly hand.

"Nothing."


	3. Chapter 3

**_Mångata_**** (Swedish) - A roadlike reflection of the moon in the water.**

* * *

This place is off-limits for Derek. Or, it was until Stiles gives him a new reason to keep coming back here. The cliffs at the edge of the woods smell too much like confusion, teenagers, their hormones, and the bitter mist tossed over from the coast below. He swears he can still smell Scott and Allison, too.

But that's second to what's in front of him now, which smells painfully like hope wrapped in cotton and aftershave.

Mostly it smells like weed, though. Skunky as hell.

It's all doing a good job of cutting straight across Derek's quickening heartbeat. That'll be the moon, as always. He takes a drag. It's mid-December, at least, so the thing pulling at his chest with invisible strings isn't as strong as it will be in a week or so.

For now, it's more than the moon making his blood gallop. More than the weed making him float. And definitely more than the cold making him shiver.

"Here, take it," Derek says, holding out the joint to Stiles. "I'm done." He coughs inelegantly into his sleeve and Stiles takes it. Those hands, fingers long and. . . _capable_ is pretty much the only safe word he can come up with. _Jesus_, they make parts of him twitch. And those eyes are so much keener than they should be at twenty-two. Everything on Stiles is bigger than he remembers. It's something he keeps forgetting until he makes himself look.

Not that looking at Stiles is hard. Derek's been staring for a long time.

"You barely had any," Stiles says, voice a little rocky with smoke. "Come on, have a heart. If I finish it all by myself I'll sleep til Christmas morning." Stiles tokes deeply anyway, knee bumping against Derek's. "Shit, that's not a bad idea, actually."

They lay on their backs, propped on the Camaro's hood, warmed by the residual engine heat, and maybe high enough for loose tongues. Derek shoves an arm under the back of his head.

"Do you ever wish it had been you?" Derek asks, tearing his eyes away from the moon to watch Stiles diddle the cherry with his fingers. "Instead of Scott, or Lydia. Or even Jackson."

"Never," Stiles responds, without a pause. Derek likes this too much, missed it too much in these broken years, hearing honesty from Stiles the liar, the reprobate. The loyal one. This close, he can hear the murmuring wave of something under it, a beat where the lie would be, filled instead with certainty. "Why?" He asks. "Don't tell me _you_ do. Because I have a taser where I can get to it. I have moves you've never seen."

"No you don't." And because he can only stare at Stiles' mouth for so long, searching for a sound or a scent that's always, maybe, been just for him, Derek looks away. He doesn't bother to hide his smile. He says, "You can look at the moon and it's just a moon. I think that's. . ." He closes his eyes, swimming in the dark. "You won't ever see it as this thing that grips you. No matter where you are."

Again there's no hesitation in the heartbeat beside him, no false language in the way Stiles moves on him. Derek raises up on his elbows, genuine surprise spiking outward from his chest when Stiles puts a knee on either side of him, seating him like a horse with no saddle, slowly, with the joint hanging from his mouth.

"Stiles. . ." He could move him if he wanted to-wrap his hands around the wool coat, the bulk of arms, and set Stiles aside. But he doesn't.

"You didn't corner the market on brood, Batwolf. Man. Batman wolf."

Any other time and he might have laughed. Hell, a few more tokes and he might have been rolling with laughter at the way Stiles' face shifts from confident to confused and back again. But with the promise of his warm weight still unfulfilled across Derek's lap, with the longish hair ruffled and spread over his head, with the puckered bow of his mouth as he blows on the end of the joint. . . the only thing funny about it is how delirious Stiles has made him. The tables are well and truly turned.

"Get off," he croaks, but Stiles only shakes his head, still looking at the joint.

"I don't need super strength or super hearing or a super nose to feel . . . hounded. Never did, trust me." Stiles settles, finally, heavy and precise over Derek's lap. It takes his breath, and it takes inhuman willpower not to push up like he wants, grip like he needs.

He's nothing if not inhuman.

Derek lays a firm hand low on Stiles' leg, not fumbling at it like the trap it sort of is, and Stiles gives him what he's been waiting for: not a tease, and not a rebuke, just truth in the drag of their jeans and eyes that lock to his without fear.

"Trust me when I say I know the feeling," Stile murmurs.

Then he sucks hard on the joint, making it flare, and bends quickly to cover Derek's mouth with his own.

The seal is sloppy at first, smoke leaking in a pungent fog around their faces, but Derek inhales because he has to, letting it crash into his lungs like fall of ash. No flame, just lips that didn't burn as badly as he'd feared, and his head swims with the combination, with how much more he wants. And when it's all gone, when it's not smoke he's trying to draw down into him any longer, Derek feels Stiles flick the spent joint and grab the front of his jacket. The shotgun becomes a real kiss, wet and strong, and Derek's done being the Big Shy Wolf. That's not what he is, not what Stiles has ever needed.

Stiles kisses him as if he's looking for the Big Bad Wolf again, tongue leading the search for canines as his weight bears down and the hood thumps under them. Like before, even Stiles' heartbeat loses its secrecy, rocket-loud and climbing. And Derek doesn't remember how he'd gotten lost in the first place, but with his fingers creeping around, claiming the narrow hips rolling over his, he's damn sure he's found his way back. When Stiles moans, head tilting to deepen the kiss, it's all the trigger Derek needs. He's hard, slipping down the hood as Stiles bucks down onto him, but he's not silent any more.

Derek growls around the tongue in his mouth, plants his boots, and takes hold of all that new hair. He pulls, and Stiles comes away breathless, lips swollen and trailing spit. It's beautiful, beyond sexy. Better than knowing the moon. Derek loosens his grip.

"Sit up." He tugs backwards, pulling Stiles upright, feeling his dick surge when a smile follows the flash of stubbornness on Stiles' mouth. Derek pushes, scoots, until they're off the front of the Camaro, neither one letting go of a lapel or a scrap of wool. And when both sets of feet are back on firm ground, Derek doesn't let Stiles get the first move again. Two steps and he's back in familiar territory, shoving Stiles against the driver's side door.

"It's pointless to tell you to take it easy, right?" Stiles says, eyebrows arcing. Derek's so focused on his mouth that he barely hears what's coming out, and groans a little at the thought of how to cover it, fill it. Stiles licks his lips, pulling Derek's hips. "Right. Ahh. Nevermind." Stiles takes a handful of ass, takes the heavy slant of Derek's mouth on his as they kiss again. Derek feels a palm riding softly along his back pockets, and a free hand tucked in his hair. Sweet. Not the hard jump-start they'd played at.

Derek never expects the noise that fumbles out of his own throat, a whine doused in gravel as he breaks the kiss to nose at Stiles' jaw, the angle and bone that's just the right height now. Just right and so _there_, a set of spreading legs and talented lips and the equal strength of hands and heartbeat pulling him in instead of pushing.

Derek hears himself whine again, into the hot skin of Stiles' throat, as their hips connect-if it sounds pathetic, he doesn't care. But the high pitch of it stops Stiles, which stops them both long enough for their hot breath to gather like smoke in the chill. He can't look, can't do anything but lean hard into the juncture of neck and shoulder and just be one raw, unending nerve while Stiles strokes the dip of his back under his leather jacket.

"Shit," Stiles mumbles against his hair. "I'm pretty sure that's a good sound, but not having the ears, and the inside track and all, you can't be too careful. So. Are we? Are you. . .okay?"

Derek laughs, just once, for how unbelievable it feels.

"Right now, or in general?" he asks, sinking into the peacoat, voice muffled. Weed is supposed to smooth everything, but he feels about as rough as rust.

"Just making sure." Stiles lets go, just to hold up his palms, and Derek has to lean back to shake his head at the worry on that face. Still, he doesn't smell uneasy, or really like anything but joy, and Stiles presses a hand over his own heart like a boy scout. "Hey, I'm nothing if not a total gentleman. Ask Lydia. Actually don't. But there are other, I mean _sterling_ character witnesses I could-"

"Stiles."

"Because you _feel_ okay. You feel pretty _a lot_ okay. Amazing. Like, amazing took a spa day and came out . . . you." As he speaks, Stiles pushes Derek's jacket open, hands settling around his waist. "But you look like you're doing long division in there, so I'm not really sure what's going on."

"Seemed pretty sure," Derek mumbles, squeezing his eyes shut like they might fall out otherwise. This place is off limits for a reason. Teenagers, he reminds himself, and confusion, and how his hands don't find enough of the heat they're seeking along the back of Stiles' coat.

"Did I?" Stiles says, not a question at all, and he smirks without humor.

Derek grips the door handle.

"Get in the car." When he pulls the door it brings Stiles further into his arms, kissing the soft flesh just beneath Derek's ear, making everything that much harder.

His life and his dick. "Is it pointless to tell you to stop?" Derek almost whispers.

There's no grin, no smart-ass return, just an ebbing of the boldness that's clung to Stiles since he got back. Derek misses it immediately. Stiles nods, shakes his head.

"Yeah. I can do that," he replies. But it's painful how slowly he removes his hands, how Derek can hear the stutter of a heart shielding itself again. How he knows the feeling. Stiles straightens-up and skirts the back of the Camaro to get in the passenger side.

Derek inhales the coast again, drops into the driver's seat, and says with a sigh, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah you are. But if it's a contest for who feels shittier, I gotta tell you that you're losing to a world champion, Hale." Stiles moves to prop his shoe on the dash, legs bouncing in the cold.

"Don't." Derek turns the car on, revving to gather heat in the engine, and sees Stiles put his foot down. This is criminally dumb, he thinks. It's dumb in the way they'd all been at the start, and somehow he'd kept his fam- . . .them alive. Or maybe it was the other way around. It had been bloody, awkward, and then it became sort of wonderful. They'd trusted him, held him up, and Derek had figured out how to be worthy of that.

For a time.

But this - the way Stiles gnaws on a fingernail and waits in silence instead of filling it with junk - is _earning it_ all over again. And Derek may not know exactly why, but he wants to do the work. Build a house one piece at a time.

The heater warms up, finally, replacing the initial mild air with a blast of dry heat.

"Kiss me again," he says, submitting to the memory of chlorine, of the woods, and the ash. Though his eyes are screaming for something less raw to look at he keeps them trained on Stiles, searching his face, and Derek forgoes the moon for something closer.

For the second time, Stiles doesn't hesitate with his reply, clasping Derek's head and reaching his lean body across the gear-shift. Derek remembers the small muscles of his own lips, wakes them, and fits himself against the need pouring off Stiles. The kiss is long, sweet, and Derek's tongue traces the inner sweep of Stiles' lips. Better without the weed, and better for the way it feels overall, like when he was fifteen and mastering shifting. Like the moment of knowing, and choosing what to be. This kiss is Derek, not the snarling half, so he lets it go on, _hanging on_, until Stiles tapers off with smaller kisses and slack fingers on his neck.

Then they just breathe in the car, with the heater flowing over them and cold blue moonlight edging out the shadows on their faces.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Stiles starts, "because it's going to sound bossy. And I'm not into making demands. Suggestions, maybe. Keen observations. But I have to say," He licks his lips, thumb working hard into the stubble along Derek's jaw. "We should do this all the time."

And because he knows Stiles doesn't mean the kiss, exactly or entirely, Derek _feels_ himself smile as the heat of it comes rolling up from the center of him.

"You might be right."

"Seriously, I am always right. When will everyone learn?" Stiles sits back, fists bouncing on his knees.

They glance at each other, Derek's hand heavy on the shift. Stiles will leave, and it's hard to fill his mind with bright days when they're over before they start. He's long since worked out where he fucked it all up, lined up his fears under right and wrong: power and suffering, trust and hope. But watching Stiles buckle his seatbelt, how he stops to squeeze his hand, Derek adds time to the ledger of things that will keep him up at night. He's afraid of _time_ for the first time, and he doesn't know where to put that.

He swings the Camaro away from the cliff, slipping back into the woods as he puts the waterlogged moon in his rearview.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Jayus_ (Indonesian) – A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh.**

* * *

He's waited all day to break the news, bouncing whole phrases inside him like a rubber ball. So it's when they're settled across the desk from one another, lunch like old times in his dad's office, that Stiles finds his opening.

"What's your plan for graduation? I probably shouldn't ask, but knowing you," His dad says, chewing on the end of a chicken strip. "You've had a dozen different plans by now."

"A dozen at least. Yep. Astrophysics didn't pan out. There's just not enough soul-crushing math." Stiles takes a giant bite of his wrap. The elements of school were so appealing, so numerous, that pretty early on he'd lamented a state of the world that required him to make use of his degree after an arbitrary four-year period instead of remaining a student forever. It was a better fit than high school had ever been. Why couldn't they have done college first? "Surprisingly I stuck with Journalism the longest, after jumping ship from English Lit."

He watches his dad nod, unsure if it's interest or worry that pulls all the creases in his forehead together at once. Hell, it could be heartburn. That doesn't stop him from taking his shot, and he waits until his dad puts the soda straw in his mouth. Because timing is something he'd learned in Theater.

"Also I thought I'd go ahead and start seeing someone while I'm home," Stiles says, looking down at the napkin between his fingers. "Derek Hale."

His dad's lips purse around the soda he can't swallow fast enough, and his eyes go wide. Stiles nods, smiling softly.

"Murder suspect. Twice arrested," he continues, confirming the red-faced questions his father is scrabbling towards as he gulps. "Creature of myth. Owner of a ridiculous, albeit American, car." Stiles pushes his palms together. "That one, yeah."

"You have got to be," his dad sputters, finally, a wet cough sending fried crumbs across his desk. "This is a - you're joking."

"Always." Stiles grins.

The Sheriff's chair is a chorus of wooden groans as he sits back.

"But not this time, right?" His dad puts a gnarled hand somewhere between his heart and stomach, in the heartburn zone, where the news is likely hitting hardest. "You're not joking."

"Nope," Stiles says. "Look, it's-" _Not serious_. But that would be the worst kind of lie. Whatever he's managing between himself and the walking unknown that is Derek Hale, it can't start with a lie like this one, no matter how it's making his dad breathe hard across the desk. "I don't know what it is."

After a pause big enough to drive his old Jeep through, Stiles has to stand up. Has to move, muscles remembering fuck all about calm redistribution of energy, and his dad's eyes follow him as he shuffles and stops. They stare at each other, con-artist and local sentinel, and Stiles struggles to feel anything other than twelve years old with a handful of firecrackers.

But then, his dad's hoarse laughter erupts like startled birds from the other side of the desk, and Stiles watches him turn red all over again.

"Son, I hope you know what..." he starts, and then shakes his head like every dad ever. "Jesus. Derek goddamn Hale." He pats his chest with the heel of his palm as he laughs, whistling through an admonition that Stiles can't read, exactly. "It's not the first time I've had a file on someone you're dating."

"No sh- _doubt_," Stiles replies, leaning hard on the back of a chair, working a week's worth of tension into the grip of it. "But it _is_ the first time I'm telling you beforehand. Instead of, you know, making those awkward first introductions at a crime scene."

"To be fair, that only happened the one time," his dad says, fake-serious mouth going thin. "And she was worth it, so you said." He takes another sip of soda, nodding, and Stiles circles back around to sit again. That he's gone and let Stiles off the hook for history's sake is a good sign. But the way his dad swivels his chair, eyes heavy on the pile of paperwork gathered underneath their lunch, has Stiles bouncing his knees.

"So, yeah. That's all the news on my end," says Stiles. "What's new with you?" He doesn't want to, but he lets the edge of his finger creep into his mouth, all the flesh of his nervousness concentrated in the slide of cuticles under his waiting teeth.

"Nothing much, and that's good," his dad says, looking around the office. "Closer to an infarction than I'd like to be so early in the day, but hey." The chair chuckles along with his dad, springs squeaking while the Sheriff's shoulders shake.

"I'll save my best material for when you're off-duty next time."

Stiles wipes his hand on his jeans, managing to meet his dad's pinched brows with a smirk. Which he gets back.

He finds a smile across the desk so full of helpless solitude that it makes Stiles wish for real magic. A time-turner or a blue police box or anything but the unfailing, utterly linear human catastrophe he's been all his life.

"I'd be much obliged," his dad says, rubbing his face.


	5. Chapter 5

**_Cafuné_**** (Brazilian Portuguese) – The act of tenderly running one's fingers through someone's hair.**

* * *

He surprises himself at night, hands pushing the sheets past his hips with something like irrepressible duty. That he can still be surprised is a surprise. There's a first time for everything, even now. First fangs, first claws, first brain-rattling contortion of bone and rush of blood.

But this rush is totally different, vehement in a new way, and Derek slicks lube over his calluses. He palms his warm flesh to the memory of Stiles' hair. Of all the things new about him this was the change that hit Derek deepest, for some reason, square in the chest. It pried open the part of him that kept so many faces frozen the way he'd needed to remember them. His family, the pack. Stiles is still there, every freckle and flush, just not happy to be _still_ any more. What was buzzed short, so familiar that Derek could have mapped every cowlick and the entire twisting border of it, had grown long and rough. Stiles with hair, and so much of it, becomes a vivid fantasy for Derek.

With each pull, each sticky tug on his dick, he lets his dull imagination scrabble for how it might feel. There are just too few real people to draw from, too few memories he'd even consider letting out of their boxes, that it's hard to think of a texture for Stiles' hair. Derek jacks himself slowly, eyes squeezing shut, heart setting a tempo for all the flashing images that won't settle so he can just pound this out and be done. Can't that mouth just _be_ on him? Stiles between his legs and, please God, not even quiet about it.

If he opens his eyes, he'll just see his own red skin bunching, black hair damp, and not what he's actually let himself want. Not how hot he is for the idea of Stiles and the real Stiles, too. Every pump just one more promise to drag that face up, take all that hair and hold on.

Fisting harder, he goes to the only thing he has: laying on the Camaro, with the weight of Stiles, the smell of him, skunky weed and the best kiss he's ever tasted, with his claws itching to have their way. But they hadn't. Heat like the burn of electricity, but the kiss and how much he knew Stiles had meant it . . .that was real.

So yeah, if he looks down Stiles won't be there, but he _could_ be. And fuck if the eventuality of it doesn't make him harder. Derek's head bashes a crater in his pillow, hand rolling over the slick tip of his cock, slit-teasing what's leaking freely, and down again. That's not even the sweetest part.

He's panting now, heels digging wells in the mattress, hips canted. He makes use of his free hand, giving his balls a firm tug, squeezing harder for the hands he'd rather be doing this, and then drags his thumb across the tip of his cock again and again. It takes so long before he's done that when he comes, Derek exhales audibly, ragged and clammy with the sweat of it _almost_ being good. Almost, and not at all.

No, the sweetest part would be after, when they're exhausted. He pitches onto his side, gathering the pillow with a shaking fist. The best would be to fall asleep with Stiles just . . .there. Wet hair plastered to his neck. With Stiles' hand stroking his temple, breath ghosting his chest, and blood drifting to a quiet hum that might just cover everything.


End file.
